1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure generally relates to apparatuses and methods for spooling wire, and more particularly, to a compact reel assembly capable of spooling wire independent of a jack stand or other reel support or spooling device.
2. Description of Related Art
To distribute electricity throughout a building, insulated electrical wires or cables are installed between a power source and a power distribution box and routed to electrical boxes to supply electricity to a device. Often, these electrical wires or cables are routed through multiple conduits throughout the building spanning great distances. As such, installing electrical wires presents both logistical and mechanical challenges. Wires are typically installed in a building by pulling the wire via pulling cables through the building's infrastructure. The wire is spooled off of a reel assembly during the wire pulling process.
Wire is typically transported from a wire manufacturing site to the building construction or installation site on the reel assembly typically made from metal or wood. These reel assemblies can have diameters of up to 48 inches or more, and are capable of carrying thousands of pounds of wire. At the construction site, construction workers are faced with the challenge of spooling the large bulk of wire from the reel assembly during a wire pull. The size and weight of the reels when carrying cable or wire present many problems associated with installation at the installation site. The reel assembly is usually lifted off of the ground and set upon a pair of jack stands, which allows the reel to freely spin during a wire pull. During a wire pull, one end of the wire is attached to a pulling cable. Today, electric-powered machines are used to apply a pulling tension to the pulling cable, thereby spooling the wire off of the reel and through the building's infrastructure.
The use of jack stands to support the reel assembly during a wire pull has a number of significant disadvantages. For example, it requires heavy machinery or multiple personnel to lift a large reel from the ground to the jack stand platform. This use of heavy machinery is both costly and dangerous to construction workers. Also, jack stands are themselves large pieces of equipment. They are difficult to transport, and when installed, they consume a large amount of floor space at a construction site. For smaller construction sites, the jack stand can present significant space challenges during construction. One solution to the above is to deliver the reel and wire to the construction site on a portable jack stand installed on a flat-bed truck. However, this solution also has many disadvantages. First, the jack stands are large and limit the amount of available flat-bed space to transport multiple reels. Second, flat-bed trucks can take up a large amount of space at a construction site when positioned for spooling. Another solution is to use portable jack stands with built-in lifting mechanisms. However, these jack stands require additional equipment, and again, they can take up an inconvenient amount of space at a construction site while still requiring that the reels be lifted off of the ground and placed in a jack stand. Moreover, this solution requires the use of additional pieces of equipment with associated costs and space requirements.
Moreover, many installations require multiple wires to be dispensed and installed together. Traditionally, this requires a reel for each wire and a jack stand for each reel, which further compounds the issues discussed above.
A prior art solution of dispensing multiple wires includes incorporating multiple bays in one reel, which each wire spooled into each bay. This solution is susceptible to the faults of the prior art solutions discussed above. Additionally, in some installations, at least one wire may be of a different thickness than the remaining wires. In this situation, for each rotation of the reel, more wire of the smaller diameter is dispensed than of the larger diameter wire often causes twists, kinks, or other issues related to efficiently dispensing a plurality of wires for installation at the same time.
Thus, there is need in the art for an apparatus and method that eliminates the need to use a jack stand to spool wire from a reel during a wire pull. There is also need in the art for a reel system that is compact, easily transportable, and capable of spooling wire while resting on the ground or some other surface.